What do you feel about the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) coming to a city near you!

By Will Wynn on March 8, 2019

We all care about improving air quality right? There are highly effective ways to reduce vehicle emissions without the need for drivers to be hit by punitive and ineffective tax charges, like ULEZs. I suggest that you, like me and Fair Fuel UK, and many others, help us convince the Government and local authorities across the UK to change their cash grabbing approach, please could you take part in the largest ever survey of road user opinion on air quality strategy? Go here.

We’re told almost daily through the media, we have a major health problem caused mainly by cars, vans, trucks and even motorbikes. You’ve seen the BBC reporter taking about climate change in front of a stream of road vehicles. Despite no proof that vehicle emissions are responsible for premature deaths, the anti-car media continue to present drivers as the devil incarnate. We all know pollution is definitely a health issue, particularly in our cities. BUT It’s factually inaccurate and wrong to blame poor urban air quality solely on road vehicles.

We’re told that 40,000 people die in the UK prematurely because of NOx pollution. So where does that startling figure come from and is it correct? This figure that’s now widely reported, broadly unquestioned, across the media is because of use of the word premature and if we’re not careful this misunderstanding of the facts of NOx pollution will cost us trillions in transport policy and legislation changes and only improve our life expectancy by only a relatively tiny amount of time. In fact, by just 3.5 hours!

We absolutely need to clean our air but we need to apply real numbers and real science to this debate. We’ve taken a badly phrased headline figure from an official report and allowed it to terrify millions of consumers, devalue their vehicles and put in place bad policies from ill-informed politicos. If we can’t even accurately understand the numbers what hope do we really have, to improve our air quality? Bad science won’t help us clean our air.

Nowhere in The London Mayor’s Transport Strategy, for example, can we find any incentives for consumers to change their behaviour. The modal shift from cars will be driven by punitive extra costs through taxation and road and zone restrictions or ULEZs. Simply put, there will be places in London (and coming to a City near you) where you won’t be able to use or park a car at all and other places where you’ll have to pay for ever mile you travel. With public transport service being cut back and in a state of flux, where do our transport options lie?

This survey is unashamedly a way to ask what you think, and totally from your perspective, about the right ways to improve air quality and benefit our environment. At FairFuelUK, along with MPs and many influential decision makers, they are calling on all national and local politicians, the well-financed environmental groups, and those green agenda driven media commentators, to work with them, to get the best unbiased solutions that will benefit air quality without damaging the economy or financially hurting hard-working low-income drivers and small businesses. Surely that is a massively fair ask! Please help us to make them listen! Take the survey now.